


The Seventh Moon of Dune

by gladdecease



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Alien Planet, Community: story_lottery, Gen, Rhyming
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-04-28
Updated: 2010-04-28
Packaged: 2017-10-10 00:41:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,174
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/93365
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gladdecease/pseuds/gladdecease
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On which the Doctor and Amy run into a platoon of... well, I think you can guess.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Seventh Moon of Dune

"Where are we?" Amy asked, stepping out of the TARDIS. "It looks like some kind of tropical paradise!"

She wasn't wrong; the lush vegetation and humid weather would have suited a rain forest. It was a miracle the TARDIS had found an empty space large enough to land, but miracles were a favorite hobby of the time-traveling ship. The Doctor rubbed a hand against the ship fondly as he locked the door. "Does it?" he asked, turning to look at Amy. He glanced down at her rather short shorts, delicate strapped sandals, and cheerfully painted toenails. "You'll fit right in, I suppose," he muttered.

Amy spun around, a warm breeze blowing her hair back. "You say something?" she asked absently.

"Nothing." The Doctor coughed, looking up and around quickly. "But, to answer your original question, _we_ are on one of the moons of Dune. The... third, I think?" He squinted up at the sky, but the atmosphere on the moon was thick enough that he could only see a faint impression of the large desert planet above.

"The third moon of Dune?" Amy repeated disbelievingly.

"I can't be sure just yet," the Doctor said, picking a direction to walk at random. Amy followed, her sandals slapping loudly against her feet. "I can't tell by the sky, not with the sun blocking out the other moons, so I need to find a river." He grinned when his foot sank into wet ground with a loud squelching sound, knowing that if he'd found mud he was getting close.

"Why a river?" Amy asked, neatly avoiding getting stuck in the mud herself by jumping from one dry patch to the next.

"Well," the Doctor amended, "it doesn't _have_ to be a river. Could be a lake. Or a creek!"

"Or a pond?" she asked teasingly, grinning.

"Or a pond, yes," the Doctor confirmed, grinning back. "Any source of water, really!"

"Why?"

"Need to check the color!" the Doctor said, abruptly leaving the muddy path to poke his head into a bush.

"Why do we need to do that?" Amy asked, but the Doctor, head still in a bush, muttering to himself, didn't seem to hear her. "Doctor?" she asked again, stepping carefully around a large muddy spot to get closer to the Time Lord. With a triumphant "a-_ha_!", the Doctor shot up, nearly smacking Amy in the head. She jumped back with a squeal of surprise, and then a small groan as she heard another squelching sound.

The Doctor turned to Amy, grinning madly. "Oh, Amy, I _am_ good. Come on," he added, grabbing her hand and tugging. With another squeal and a squelch, her foot escaped its muddy prison, and Amy stumbled after the Doctor as he pulled her further into the jungle.

Ducking under a wiggling vine, the Doctor laughed wildly, saying, "You see, each of the twelve moons of Dune has a unique mineral in its crust which, when dissolved by water, emits a very curious wavelength of light. In other words--" He shoved a branch to one side and pulled Amy forward, showing her that they'd reached another clearing. This one wasn't clear of trees because of a patch of earth, though - quite the contrary, it was nothing but water, just as uniquely colored as promised.

"It _glows_," Amy said, wide-eyed, staring at the deep red pool. The Doctor stuck his hand in the water, inspected the less opaque droplet on his fingertips, and licked. Sputtering, he spat it out and shook his hand off.

"_Salt_ water," he said, making a face. "Fresh water would be a bit brighter than this - the salt interferes with the absorption of the mineral. But, more to the point, this is _not_ the third moon of Dune, which has water the color of your sun." Amy thought about that, then made a face at the implications. "Yeah," the Doctor said slowly, "they have a bit of a tourism problem."

"So, which one is this then, if not the third?"

The Doctor's brow wrinkled. "Not sure," he said, squinting at the water. "Would you say that's more "red" or "maroon"?"

"Uh," Amy stared at the water. "Don't know. Maroon, I guess? Why?"

"Because," the Doctor said, standing up, "that means we're on the seventh moon of Dune." His tone had gotten suddenly solemn, and when Amy looked up at him his expression was worryingly blank.

"Is that... bad?" she asked.

The Doctor blinked, turned to her, and laughed once, quietly. "No! No, it's fine. The seventh moon is fairly unpopulated near the coasts, where _we_ must be to have come across salt water. It's those guys, over there," he pointed at the far side of the body of water, "that concern me."

Amy peered at them. Large looking blokes, wearing black leather armor and skirts, rounding out the uniform with huge dark helmets. "Who are - who _are_ they?" she asked, lowering her voice when the Doctor made a sudden motion at her.

"If I'm not much mistaken," the Doctor whispered, "that's a platoon of Judoon."

"A - a platoon of Judoon?" Am repeated, wrinkling her nose. "Are you kidding me?"

"_What_?" the Doctor asked indignantly. "Of _course_ I'm not kidding you, this is serious."

"But, you're saying that's a _platoon_ of _Judoon_, by a _maroon lagoon_, on the _seventh moon of Dune_." She looked at the Doctor expectantly; he was staring off into middle distance. "Do you really expect me to believe that?"

"Well," the Doctor shrugged. "It's happened to me before."

"What, Judoon on a moon?"

"On _your_ moon, actually," he corrected absently. "A few years back, they popped a London hospital up there for an afternoon." He frowned, turned his attention fully on Amy. "You never heard about it? I'm pretty sure people talked about it for a while," he added hopefully.

Amy shook her head. "Nope."

The Doctor frowned more. "There's something about you, Amy Pond," he said darkly. "But I can't put my finger on it."

Shrugging helplessly, Amy turned to look at the mysterious Judoon again and muffled a scream, backing up into the jungle. "Oh my god," she said breathlessly. "They have rhinoceros heads."

"Don't be ridiculous," the Doctor said. "Rhinoceroses have Judoon heads. Still," he added, "staying away from the Judoon, that's not a bad idea."

"Why?" Amy asked, standing up slowly. "What do Judoon do?"

"They're sort of... interplanetary policemen," the Doctor said, stepping backwards slowly.

Amy paused. "That doesn't sound so bad."

The Doctor tugged on her arm. "Yeah, well, it _does_ when you've broken interplanetary laws."

Amy turned an accusing look on the Doctor. "You're a _criminal_?"

"_Hey_," he said lowly, "my crimes were _for_ humanity, not against it." At a sound of marching that was heavy as thunder, he paled and grabbed on to her arm more tightly. "They must have heard us," he said quickly, tugging harder and moving backwards faster. "We've got to get going."

"But -"

"No time!" the Doctor insisted, turning around. "Come on, run!"

Heaving a frustrated sigh, Amy turned around and ran.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the prompt "lagoon", and originally posted [here](http://community.livejournal.com/glad_fics/31221.html).
> 
> I'm really sorry for the giant rhyming pun that is this fic. Really, I am.
> 
> Also, written long before we knew that Amy forgetting alien invasions was something happening to everybody.


End file.
